


Long Time Coming

by ndnickerson



Category: Nancy Drew - Keene
Genre: F/M, Nancy Drew Files, Post-Canon, Romance, Sex, Sexual Content, Vacation, beach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-28
Updated: 2009-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-05 10:19:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/40625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ndnickerson/pseuds/ndnickerson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nancy takes Ned on a special trip after his college graduation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Long Time Coming

**Author's Note:**

> Follows I'll Follow You Into the Dark, but isn't necessary for comprehension.

Ned's already half-lit by the time she arrives at the party, but he finds her immediately anyway, a broad grin stretching across his handsome face. "What took you so long?" he asks, pulling her to him for a kiss that tastes a lot like fermented Koolaid.

"Just had to finish up a few last-minute things," Nancy tells her boyfriend, bemused. He's been stretched tight these past few weeks, and she has been no better; on a trip to visit George's aunt up in Maine Nancy was drawn into a case involving art forgery, and coming back to Ned has been a welcome relief. "And it tastes like maybe I'll have to drink a gallon of PJ to catch up with you."

He shakes his head, and the trace of his lips is sweet and tacky on her skin. "I've only just now started feeling it," he says, and laughs when he trips on what could only be thin air. "Come on, let me get you a drink."

The younger members of the frat are gone; it seems that only the seniors, their girlfriends, and their friends are in the house, but that is more than enough people. The big-screen television and stereo system are still set up in the common room, the kitchen table is still a veritable buffet of half-empty bottles of alcohol, and some of the brothers are dressed in their caps and gowns, tassels hanging free, over their raggedy t-shirts and busted jeans. Ned hasn't joined in that, she notices. He is in a black t-shirt that feels smooth under her fingers, and she can't stop touching him, her arm linked around his waist, grinning when he looks away from her, her straight perfect teeth showing, her eyes closed. She is really, really looking forward to tomorrow.

But right now she is really, _really_ looking forward to tonight.

"Mike and Jan here?"

"Mike and Jan _were_ here," Ned says, shooting her a suggestive leer, but all she does is giggle. She is stone sober, but being in his presence sometimes makes her feel weightless, adrift, and only the feel of his fingers laced through hers can keep her near the ground. "Speaking of..."

"No," she says, firmly, but her eyes are twinkling. "This is your graduation party and we are staying. For at least a little while."

They stand in the kitchen, looking down at the bottles, the tumbled mess of plastic cups in the wide industrial sink, the moon high and bright through the window. Around them couples and brothers with ridiculous grins on their numb faces chatter, over the din of ice against plastic and bass against the hardwood floors, and suddenly his arms are tight around her, fingers laced low at her belly and her back against his chest. He kisses the nape of her neck and she closes her eyes.

"If you insist," he murmurs, his breath ruffling the fine hair there, making her shiver.

When they play spin the bottle with some girls who seem entirely too watchful and their too permissive boyfriends, she feels a low growl of a headache begin to hum between her ears, in memory of another night, another game, another wash of pinprick-white stars in the cold black hanging over them, but she doesn't drink enough to push the feeling away, and in the end he drags her out to the porch and kisses her, the taste of his buzz tingling against her tongue when it touches his, his hands shoving her hips up until she is balanced precariously on the low rail, her hands framing his face, gasping for breath when they pull apart.

"I love you, Nancy Drew."

"I love you too," she says, her eyes gleaming, her cheeks flushing, gooseflesh rising on her arms. It is the truest thing she has said in a very long time, truer than her mumbled affirmations on the phone before hanging up with him when they are miles or states away, because she never loves him more than she does when he is with her. He takes her air, makes her breath his own, becomes so fully and completely part of her that life without him is unbearable, and sometimes he knows. Tonight, he knows.

Tonight, he will know, he will ask her, and she will give; tomorrow he will know, tomorrow she will take _his_ air and make it her own, for once, for a little while.

When he leads her upstairs, there is no knowing low sound of envy and audience, and her skin is tacky with night-sweat and the air and smoke and breathed alcohol. Her heart is beating, throbbing in her chest, as though tonight will be their first time, throbbing with the weight of the alcohol, high and erratic. She had a glass too much PJ, a shot too much, and after two more drinks Ned had become affectionate, overly affectionate, indulging in far too much PDA than she had ever been comfortable with, his hands plucking at her waist, her jeans, the hem of her shirt, her sleeves, tracing the nape of her neck, the line of her veins as they webbed through her fingers.

Behind his door he lifts the hem of her shirt and she obediently raises her arms, hands dangling loose from her wrists, and he kisses her lazily, slowly, arching his tongue up into her mouth, his hand closing hard against the point of her hip. Her shoes are somewhere downstairs and her toes dig into the plush pile carpet in his room, for the last time, the last time. She brings her hands up and tangles her fingers in his hair, even after they are perched on the edge of his bed and she can feel him exhale against her cheek before he tilts his face and kisses her hard the other way, so hard their teeth scrape, but she still doesn't pull back.

He drapes a shirt over the lampshade, beside the head of his bed, watching her squirm out of her jeans, her panties sliding an indecent inch down the curve of her hips, and she echoes the same longing she sees in his eyes when she reaches for him, pulling him by the belt-loops to her, tugging him with the same simplemindedness of a child. She wants him. Tomorrow is tomorrow and she will deal with that day when it comes, but for tonight, she is with her boyfriend, the man she has always known she will marry, the man who has found her finally, completely, turned her inside out and made love to her by candlelight that first time, not so long ago.

She likes to remember candlelight. She likes to remember the slow heat of it playing over his skin as he arched over her, she likes to remember that she kept her eyes open the entire time, kept one hand flat against his skin, his side, his back, his hip, tangled in his hair, reminding herself that this, if nothing else, was real, was true, was right. Before her little trip to Maine and the last two weeks of his impossible college schedule, they became comfortable with each other, safe with each other, learned the tiny soft gasps of permissible joy, the way every inch of his skin tasted on her tongue and that when they slept, he slept closest to the door and she curled up with her chest to his back, one arm thrown over his side, her knees bent and tucked up against his. The night before she left for Maine she buried her face against his bare back, and her heart had nearly broken in the dark while his heart slept under the flat cup of her palm, her sick belly roiling where it pressed to his skin. Homesick. Homesick for want of him.

His first caress is always with his eyes, when this is a given, a night with her and not a stolen half-hour in the shade of a backseat or tall weeds or the upholstered hell of another stakeout. Maybe eventually she will learn the weight of his gaze even in the dark, but for now he watches her and she watches his eyes, seeing herself through them. She looks beautiful to him, has always looked beautiful to him, her red-gold hair spilling back over her bare smooth shoulders, propped up on her elbows, breasts standing firm and full, half in the swallow of shadow, the dusty rose of her nipples dark at their centers, the shadow of her flat belly hiding the join of her thighs. Long smooth legs and clear frank eyes, because even if she was drunk before, now, now she is all right, will be all right, will remember every moment of this, and she knows that he loves her for that. He follows that slow insubstantial caress with his hands, then his lips, slow and careless with the rise of undenied lust, and when he comes with her ankles linked hard at the small of his back he sinks his teeth in, makes hard livid crescents against her shoulder, and she takes the press of his hips against her inner thighs and closes her eyes, brushing her lips against his neck, before the room spins away and they are one, one will, one satisfied impulse, her hips jerking and pressing up hard in small frantic spasms against his cock as she rides the slow cresting wave of her orgasm.

"I love you," she gasps, her face gleaming with slow sweet sweat, and she means it, her heart is so full with it that she thinks it will burst.

He brushes her hair back, presses his lips to her forehead, letting them linger there as he holds the flat of one hand against her hip and then they are separate again and she shivers in the unspeakable emptiness of that act. "I love you too," he whispers, and she tilts her head back and breathes those words in, draws them in deep, lets them find her heart.

\--

He wakes her with kisses, the smooth locks of her hair sliding over his lips, fingers brushing the knobs of her collarbone, around the hollow of her throat. She stretches one long smooth leg straight down, making a soft pleased noise, and when her eyes flutter open she almost forgets that he doesn't know, she almost whispers that by sunset they will be alone. But she remembers in time and just twines her fingers in his hair again, taking his weight with a soft low sigh, bending her legs to cradle his waist.

"I have to get ready."

She nods and latches on and when he slides out of bed she's still holding on, and he hugs her, holding her close to him, against the cool morning air. When he releases her she stretches and goes immediately to the other side of the bed, dressing hastily, pulling her hair into a high messy ponytail.

When she looks back he's pouting. "You're leaving?"

She grins, white against her tanned face. "I have a few things to finish up," she says, and when a growing suspicion shows in his face she laughs. "And I'll bet you twenty bucks that it's not what you're thinking."

He looks away for a second. "I would," he says slowly. "But you're just that unpredictable..."

She sits on the edge of his bed to pull on her socks and he walks over to her, still naked, the edge of stubble alight against the curve of his jaw. She stands in her stocking feet and puts her arms around him one last time, then turns her head and whispers against his earlobe, "I'll be back, I'll be watching, I promise."

He nods, stroking his fingertips down her cheeks. "I'll hold you to it," he says softly. "Make time for me."

She smiles her secret smile and swears she will.

After the big ceremony, the one in the auditorium with the commencement speaker and the protracted speech, and then the departmental ends with Ned, his robe hanging loose from his shoulders, unzipped and free, talking to professors with his handsome face alight. She sits at the edge of the crowd toying with a chocolate-dipped strawberry, half-listening to Hannah and Carson's conversation and the soft polite peals of Edith's laughter as she and Ned's father watch their son.

"I'll drive you back."

He ducks into her Mustang, the top already down, tosses his robe and cap into the back, unbuttons the first two buttons of his shirt. "Thanks," he sighs. "I just... Monday, back at the insurance company..."

"I want to spend as much time with you as I can," she replies, pulling away from the curb. "You still hungover?"

He shakes his head and smiles. "And I'm sure you aren't."

Her hands are just beginning to go clammy against the wheel. "Hey Ned."

"Hey," he laughs.

"Do you trust me?"

"To get me in trouble? To find a mystery even when there is no possible way you should be able to? To drive me completely crazy?"

"Besides all that," she says, shooting him a _thanks, smartass_ look. "I mean, if I drive to the airport right now and get on a plane, will you come with me?"

He glances back, his hair ruffling in the wind, and she can feel each one of the questions as it races across his mind, wondering where he will find clothes, where they're going, for how long... and whether she will find a mystery and his going with her won't make a damn bit of difference unless the perpetrator happens to be easily subdued.

"Yeah," he says softly, the sound just carrying. "Yeah, I will."

\--

She is exhausted, at the end of all of it. A flight out of O'Hare, collecting their baggage only to run for a taxi and then to the port, and on the cruise, jammed with a thousand screaming sorority girls, beads slung around their overtanned necks, where they grab two weatherbeaten lawn chairs side by side and drowse with her head resting on his chest. Another taxi to the condo and now, finally, they are following a bellhop, his black hair curled over the faded red collar of his jacket, sweat prickling on his upper lip as he swings back the door and shows them the second-best room in the hotel, the air conditioning a solid cold wave, a pressured rectangle. He shows himself out and Nancy strips in front of Ned, crossing her arms over her chest to lift her shirt and toss it to the floor, unbuttoning her jeans, stepping out of them.

"I'm taking the first shower."

"There's going to be more than one?"

They are in the Bahamas, with absolutely nothing to do, and she's too tired to do anything other than rinse the sweat and the sting from her skin, drag a comb through her wet hair and pull on one of his clean white shirts (she packed plenty for him, just for this reason) and collapse on the bed, her legs tangled with his while the shadows lengthen on the walls. The second-best room. As she just begins to drift away, memorizing the cadence of his breath, she is suddenly irrationally glad that they didn't get the best room, the true honeymoon suite, the heart-shaped bed and mirrors on the ceiling, the jacuzzi shaped like a martini glass and garish red plus carpet, a Valentine's day sale on crack. They have their own private balcony and breakfast every morning, a kitchen, just in case, but she rests her arm over his bare chest, her elbow bent with its tip pointing down to his waist, and they could almost be back in his room at the frat. Almost.

But she can feel the water sparkling at the horizon and the spicy breeze, the sweet lazy ache of a dozen hangovers and him. He is hers, for this brief span of time, he is utterly hers with no filters or reservations, and she smiles against his chest.

"What are you thinking," he murmurs, and his voice is just over a low growl.

"We have, nothing, to do," she says slowly. "No schedule. No plans. No mysteries, no deadlines..."

"No papers," he chimes in. "No chaperones. Nothing to do..." He draws his fingers over her stomach, and she makes a soft noise, stretching.

"We'll get to that," she promises, in a low throaty voice, making him laugh.

They do get to it, in that feverish time between midnight and dawn. She turns off the air conditioning and opens the windows so that the moon gleams high and bright through the curtains, stripping off the t-shirt as she returns to bed, and he maneuvers her over him, her legs spread, her knees on either side of his hips, and he rolls her onto her side and traces slow lingering wet kisses over her breasts, catching her nipples gently and lightly with his mouth, until she makes soft whimpering noises. She slips his shorts off and everywhere their skin touches goes tacky with sweat, until he's on top of her and she can feel the thick weight of him, pressing just at the join of her thighs, and he's tracing the tip of his nose over her jaw, his breath warm on her neck and she traces her nails down his back. When he can smell the dim salt-musk of her arousal, he slips his fingers just between her thighs, dipping down into the hollow, and he groans at finding her wet, his cock erect and bobbing at the promise of her flesh. He rolls her on top of him and she takes him inside her without another word, without waiting for another breath, her thighs damp against his hips, her hair already dried into tangled artless waves that spill down her back when she throws her head back, panting.

She only comes when he sits up and pulls her down against him, hard, and her nipples slide over his chest and her clit catches against the heat of him, sinking down until their hips are flush and she clenches tight at the sudden unexpected weight of him inside her, and she keeps the long slow rock of her hips gentle until he groans in frustration and sinks his short nails into her ass, urging her down. Hard, so quick it's almost vibration, and when she begins to make those whimpering gasping pants of awakened lust he pushes her down and she links her arms around his shoulders, her knees falling back toward her breasts as he pumps his cock rough and hard and quick between her legs, hissing as he comes and her cries are desperate now, her breasts shaking with his every thrust. She is nothing, she means nothing, she exists for nothing other than this, the unimaginable rightness of this and him, and when he just barely pinches her nipple between his nails she comes, _comes_, screaming, and when she breaks somehow her nails are digging into his sides and she's arched so hard it hurts, he's on his knees and his palm is cupped under her breast, against the soft taut underbelly, the ball of his thumb over her nipple and his stubble scrapes against her shoulder when he kisses the base of her throat.

"Nancy," he gasps, and the word is a prayer.

She sleeps like the dead until the room service comes, in the morning, and he feeds her pieces of fruit with his fingers, sometimes tracing a chunk of pineapple over her breast and following the wet trail with his tongue before popping it into his mouth. She finds a tiny, almost scandalously small bikini and one of those indecently short bathrobes, so short she can almost feel the breeze against the curve of her ass.

"Hey," says the woman who is just trying her door, the door next door, the door of the dread red nightmare of a honeymoon suite, when Nancy slides out in white sandals, waiting in the hallway for Ned, shivering in the air conditioning.

"Hey," Nancy says, and the other woman has a beach bag slung over her shoulder, her bottle-blonde and crispy curls gathered into a high ponytail almost on top of her head. Orange tan and french tips. It's almost too easy. "Here on your honeymoon?"

The other woman's face lights up like Christmas morning and for the space of a blink Nancy wishes with all her heart that Ned will emerge just then, _justthen_, but he doesn't, and Nancy gets to coo over a plain gold band and a doorknob of a diamond (_which means he cheated on you at least twice during the engagement_, Nancy thinks, but does not say) before Ned does emerge, in a pair of whispering charcoal-black swim trunks, a towel thrown over his tanned and hard shoulder.

"Here on your honeymoon too?"

Nancy knows this question for what it is, so it takes ten seconds for her to come up with her answer, and the entire time Ned looks almost agape, a lock of hair falling over his forehead, his brown eyes curious.

"Not yet," she manages.

"I was just wondering, because I couldn't sleep last night," and she winks, and Nancy turns to Ned and rolls her eyes, her hand finding his, but she flashes a brilliant grin at the other woman.

"You must have heard me having stomach cramps after the cruise food," Nancy says, with just the right inflection, and she's rewarded with a mildly perplexed glance for her trouble. "Really. Had too much."

She and Ned split off when they hit the lobby, breaking into a run, laughing like hell when they explode through the double doors and find the ocean. The water is everywhere, breathtakingly clear, so clear that later she can never believe this is true, that she can see her feet in it.

"You're going to be having a lot of stomach cramps," he tells her, and she giggles and splashes him until they're both drenched and their stomachs really are cramped this time, from laughter, and she has been grinning for so long that her cheeks hurt.

He calls it making love in daylight, in a harsh half-whisper against her ear; he calls it fucking when the sky is dark and the moon has risen, and on the third night the bottle blonde breaks a thin glass against the wall between their rooms and storms out and Ned, caught at the apex of his thrust, shushes Nancy with his fingers over her mouth until he's shaking with guilty laughter. What they do, what they have done two or three times every night, loudly and without reservation, figured prominently in the fight prompting that last glass-throwing, and every time he laughs his cock moves a little inside her until she groans in frustration and throws him onto his back, and fucks him until his eyes roll back in his head and he's making soft groans of encouragement against her mouth when she leans down and slips her tongue between his lips. She doesn't move, she shudders hard when he shoves his hips up against hers and follows her release with his own.

She spends the next day sunbathing and by the night her pale yellow sundress makes her look like a vision in the dark, and they go for a walk on the beach, the sand bogging down her steps and her espadrilles hanging from Ned's fingers.

"Why did you do this for me," he asks, and she can only just hear him over the roar of the waves.

She links her arm through his, avoiding the easy answer, the flippant answer. "Because I love you," she explains softly. "And you... you have been working so hard for so long and I have not been the best girlfriend to you, maybe I've never been awesome or supportive or appreciative, but I thought this was some small way I could start to make it up to you."

"Small?" He spreads his arms, gesturing expansively. "A week in the Bahamas is small?"

She beckons him down with the crook of her finger, until his ear is close to her mouth. "This is the rest of our lives," she says softly, and kisses the lobe gently. "And I want to start the rest of our lives with you knowing how much I care about you."

"So much that we may have managed to break up a pair of perfectly innocent newlyweds just by having loud and awesome sex?"

She smoothes his collar with her palm. "So much that if we don't break the bed before we check out, I'll be surprised," she teases him, then sobers. "This is about you, Ned. This whole trip is about you. Tell me what you want to do, and we'll do it." Then she shoots him a sideways glance. "Except for having sex on the beach. I do _not_ want to find sand in my ass."

He snaps his fingers in mock disappointment. "Do you know what I really want?" he asks a moment later, and he sounds very serious.

"What do you really want?"

"For us to take time like this," he answers. "I don't mean every week, or every month, and I do love being with you no matter what the circumstances, but it's been a long time since I've had this much fun with you." He smirks. "In bed or not."

"A week of every year?"

"Or two," he lobbies, his brown eyes warm when they meet hers, and she can't resist that heartbreaking glance. "Time for us. Time for us to just spend time together, and be, and not worry about whether the next day is going to be tracking down kidnappers or smugglers. Just us."

"So what do you want to do now?"

He glances up at the beach, and the booze cruise is shining like a beacon at the horizon, the cheers of the drunk and beaded sorority girls carrying over the water, the kettledrum heartbeat of the square coming from over the sand.

"I want to dance with you," he says. "Until we can't dance anymore. And then I want to go out into the water and," he leans in for this, his teeth nipping at her earlobe possessively, "fuck you in the shallows, I want to see the moon in your eyes when you come."

"Then you will," she promises, and in a burst of bright wicked laughter and a flash of yellow skirt she's gone, and he is left carrying her shoes on an empty dark beach. And he follows, his heart already wild in his throat, thinking of the moon on blue eyes and the salt that will wash them clean.


End file.
